


A Poet’s Enervation

by wormlover



Series: Oddities [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 27.01.2020, Actor Eren Yeager, Inner Dialogue, Meta Poetry, Poet Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Unfinished, thoughts of a poet, unedited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28493100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormlover/pseuds/wormlover
Summary: Of a Poet who has lost all lust and life and his thoughts \\Vigor, blossoming, dwelling, as he sees an actor perform — the muse. \\ A thing I wrote but I do not remember writing.
Relationships: Kinda - Relationship, Levi & Eren Yeager
Series: Oddities [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087133
Kudos: 2





	A Poet’s Enervation

**Author's Note:**

> The original title of the file I created on the 27.01.2020 is “Poo Poet”.

_“Your lips were red and your cheeks too, the glistening skin of your stomach bending and bulging under these heavy breaths. There was nothing more I would have loved to do than make time stop and breathe in this heat for eternity. This heat here and the fresh wind coming in from the door hitting my back, blocking you off. Off from everything, off from it all. Taking you in was my greatest desire and it was only mine to be. There was something about you only a roman marble statue could understand, for i did not either. Something sleek and soft but not as immaculate or pale. Your legs were hairy and your belly button, too, and your stomach was not as toned. Yet you lay there as if you belonged next to someone in a Rubens painting. It should have been, but it was nothing but my sheets tangled around your limbs. Making silent sounds with our souls.”_

—

He coughed because breathing in the cold air made his lungs itch. Every breath pinched, he felt, so he tried not to breathe at all. ‘Lost poets,’ they say ‘Lost poets don’t wander, they experience life.’ And though Levi was a poet he felt nothing but lost and not a grain of aliveness in the matter. And he wandered, he was restless. In his head or on his feet, he felt as if he shall never stop wandering. For resting was the first step to losing yourself. And he had nothing left but himself, so he kept on going. Someone once told him. “You see, there is something about winning a quitter would never understand. As there is something about giving up, that a winner would never understand.” 

In both lies a certain knowledge and you cannot grasp both fully. If you do, you are either a god or a liar. 

Levi brushed back his hair, took one final sharp breath and coughed again. Two girls approached him, emerged in their own chatter and disappeared through the automatic door next to him, leaving him alone again. They left their footprints in what he liked to believe was the thinnest, most delicate cover of snow ever. It did not snow at the moment but it was dark and cold so he let out a relieved huff when the automatic door opened again, a few moments later Hange stepping next to him. Fucking finally he thought, fucking finally. 

“Fucking finally.” 

“Yeah, sorry about that I promised him to get it by today.”

Nevermind, said Levi. Then he asked. “Couldn’t he get it himself? It’s not like he can't walk or anything.”

“Hm.”

Hange was the first to start walking again, unlike Levi they were not accustomed to the cold and wanted to get out of it as soon as possible. So they got to walking and Levi gladly joined. Levi was always walking, never resting.

—

“Do you love me?”

“Yeah”

“You’re  _ lying _ .”

“But I don’t think so.”

“No, you are lying. Because love means settling, resting. You don’t rest you can’t settle. Love means more to you on pages filled with poetry than it does standing in front of you and as connected you seem with spirit and earth, you are not. All you know is rhymes and beautiful things because there are beautiful things everywhere but you don’t seem to get that there is also beauty right in your arms. In your head there is Eden so nothing in this world can impress you enough to satisfy.”

Levi cannot be mad, he knows of many things but not the words he needs right now. So he shuffles and breathes into his hand that clasps around his mouth. “But you are part of this Eden, you know?” 

That sounds good. People love poetry, that is why they like him, is it not? So why should it not be poetry’s doing to save him in this fight?

“But i don’t want to be a  _ part _ of it, i want to  _ be it. _ ”

But Levi could not give that to her, so she left.

  
—

_ “Putting the whole of a lifetime into a single frame, one shot you might call it, is rather impossible. It is of the same quality as filming a single person on top of a mountain from the very foot of it. The root may be touched but you simply cannot see the higher things, anything above your head and within it and around it.  _

_ Rilke had once written in a letter, that suddenly and randomly tearing a person out of their homes and placing them on a mountain top will envelop them in a feeling alike of bursting, overwhelming emotion pooling in the bottom of one’s stomach, pulling their guts into a tight knot. He might not have worded it like this but that is very much how he made it sound. In another letter, to the same person, he stated that in these moment in our life where sadness and states of depression take the upper hand and we cannot but grieve, we must be utterly and most importantly alone. Solitude is supposed to be the eternal state of one’s being.  _

_ So why does solitude feel like being ripped away from my home, being placed on top of a mountain? I gave the thought a moment and finished thinking on the note, that Rilke was a poet. “There is much beauty here because there is much beauty everywhere.” Seemed to be the thoughts of someone who enjoyed being by their own. There is great truth in his words, but there is also a great truth in what i feel. I will appreciate his words but i cannot relate to all of them. I am a Poet myself but i could not relate.” _

_—_

“No, just the regular one. That should be enough.” 

Levi fidgeted around with the small coins in the pocket of his jacket, waiting for the lady to tell the price and finally getting lost of it. He liked having physical money in his hands, to know how much is in his possession and to know how much he was allowed to spend. Could and should. He scratched the few coins together, it was not enough, he had mistaken the 20 cents for 50. 

“Ah”, the middle aged lady behind the register said. “That is alright.” 

“Let me pay it back to you another time, thank you so much.” But she just waved him off sweetly, rambled about how terribly high the university debt must be, how anything is just too much with too little money. Levi just nodded along. He never went to university, he did not have the heart to tell her, thought that would change her mind and he indeed would have to pay back these 30 cents sometime. 

But he could not get himself to care, then he left. His fingertips smelled like copper. 

_  
—_

_ A POET’S ENERVATION 1 _

Levi poured his coffee into an obnoxious yellow colored mug, added milk and flocks started forming. They looked especially disgusting with Mickey Mouse beaming at him, a text bubble telling him that he is the best brother on this planet. The text was self written with a sharpie, for the whole mug was drawn by a child’ hand. If it had not been Levi himself who designed it, he would not have guessed it to be Mickey Mouse at all. The ears are kind of crooked and the lines wobbly and he was too hard on his younger self again as he was always too hard on his present self, too. 

__

He shuffled around in the tiny kitchen and therefore he was shuffling in his whole apartment. There was as much to his silly little, half done home than there was to a pebble. The mattress lay flat on the ground and a weirdly shaped bedside table that looked more like a round something than actual table seemed unusually big besides the mattress. Undone blanket without sheets and a used pair of socks pooling with the fabric somewhere at the bottom. One of his friends had once labeled this as ‘contemporary interior design of the approaching avant-garde.’ and he did not know if that was a standing term or not but he liked it and Erwin enjoyed it when people believed his bullshit. 

_   
  
_

He must be experiencing some sort of vertigo as he tripped forward to get a hold on the fridge handle, the other hand flinging to the counter to grip the edge with an uncoordinated trembling to them. But there was not enough strength in his body to hold himself upright so he collapsed to the unswept, dusty floor and remained there until he either died or some of his friends found him, calling the hospital. — But that was just in his head, a thought! Seemed to easy to just pass out. Of course; he would have loved to just black out and lie on his dirty kitchen floor because then he could just ignore all the little tasks he had set fo him the prior night. He would love not being guilty or blamed for not doing all these things he promised himself to do. But that was just in his head and he was actually too scared of actually passing out. He had only once before passed out and he was only 14 then. He is 26 now.

__

But then he considered, “Why not?” And so he let himself plummet and therefore he now lied. He wished he had someone who would lie there with him. 

—

_ “You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?” _ The question was greeted with silence for the question was not meant for them. The man on the stage dramatically spread his arms and the tunic casted dramatic shadows unter the harsh lights from above. There was a tension in the room that, Levi guessed, has been there every single time this play has been showed to the public eye. 

_ “O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.”  _ His lips quivered, his voice cracked wth intent.  _ ‘Bear with me; my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,”  _ The actor visibly cowered into himself. Levi did not know if he was an incredibly good actor or just a human with emotions. His gaze lifted up again, he clasped his arms across his head, his voice tearing apart In the most void, soaking way.

  
  
  
  


_ “And I must pause till it come back to me.” _

And only then did Levi seem to notice, that the man on the harshly lit stage was neither. He was a god. 

He swore he saw a halo, the way the lashes casted a shadow onto hi cheeks his wings. Something, something was not earthly with the way he carried himself away from the podium. The audience was clapping and some were whistling and Levi stood there watching this being bask in all this noise and the softening light and there was too much sound to think so he yelled bravo. Mark Antony seemed to dwell in it. The shouts and whistles so he smiled. And suddenly the world smelled of warmth and the moment was over. Mark Anthony took his leave. 

.

_ Imagine what it has to feel like running away from yourself chasing you. But naturally, you cannot outrun yourself because there’s a limit to your own speed. And imagine calling the police and the dispatcher is your own voice, you hear yourself crying for help at the same time you ask for locations. I am here, we are at the same place! Where are you, repeat that please?” _

_ Imagine the horror of hiding in your closet so the robber that broke into your house does not find you and then the door opens and you see yourself cowering in a closet at the same time you see yourself staring at yourself from above. How would that work. How much can a human brain take. How would this doubled vision work.  _

_—_

Levi swirled around in his squeaky chair, grabbed his mug in the process and put it away as soon as he did a whole 360 and faced his laptop again. He remembered that he had a pack of cigarettes in some pocket of some pants or jacket but he could not bother. He also wanted to stop smoking so that was that and he decided to go outside. But he could not find the strength to actually heft himself off the chair. 

He chew on his pencil, did not want to on his fingernails again but he did not want to smoke, either. Thought about the theater play he had been in a few days ago and mused about how great Mark Anthony — both the historical figure and the actor himself had been. There had been this unquenchable thirst to get to know the actor. 

>Winter Garden Theater wraps up Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with stunning Derniere

>Future projects to be announced. 

_  
  
_

He shut his laptop, grabbed his bag and left. Cleopatra took his leave. 

.

There is this thing about being a poet. For starters, you do not make a fucking living. Also, you are lonely and antisocial and probably will die alone sitting in the midst of books written by poets who did it. And there is your own silly little book on your coffin. Van Gogh never had it easy either but at least he lived in the beautiful Provence. You needn’t be rich or cool in the fucking Provence, 18-something. In New York you sure had to be both. O to be Mary Magdalene. O to be nothing but a follower, not a thinker. O to be Jesus Christ himself. A doer and a followed one. 

O to be a hand sticking out of flowing Lava, O to be the breaking halo on top of a sinner’s head. O to be the migraine in your temple as you find yourself a liar. O to be invisible to the world and oneself. O to not be myself but yourself. O to be above law of everything. O to be the solution to the theory of everything. O to have you, Oh.

. 

  
  
  


He was in the middle of groceries shopping when his cell phone went off, notification by the New Yorker Culture Club he had followed on Instagram or Twitter, he does not recall doing it consciously.

>Winter Garden Theater announces new project.

>Salome by Oscar Wilde to be adapted into a play with controversial gender roles and cast. 

Then they linked an article beneath, but he decided to read it later when he did not juggle two cartons of milk and all the other things he needed. Something about the joy he felt was weird, why would he be happy for maybe seeing that actor again. There was something unsettling about the thought that he was so euphoric to see the man again, whom had never seen him. There was something eerie about him being so feverishly excited about something. 

Levi did not have a therapist, but if he did, they would probably congratulate him for showing interest in something. Something that was not literature. Not wholly, at least. 

It would take a long time for the next theater play to be staged and eventually open the gates for the public eye to judge it, and normally Levi was fine with waiting but not this time. He stuffed his groceries into one of the paper bags mindlessly and paid. 

He was good with waiting and doing nothing. Did not like listening to music when walking or standing in the metro, not when he could listen to all the other wonderful noises. Hange had once called him a “doomer” but he had denied. The same evening he had googled what a doomer was. 

Levi smiled. He looked up from where he was walking on the gray sidewalk. For being a poet, he thought, he was not very incited about spreading the knowledge of world’s comeliness like an infectious sickness. He knows he was not limited to write about beauty and grace and soft things and bright things. At all, these were the things he forgot about and had to experience and learn about anew. He knew how to discuss loneliness and slow tongues. He knew how to keep his mind just in place while running endlessly. He put his bag of groceries aside and pulled at the pockets of his pants and his jacket pockets and eventually rummaged through his actual satchel, pulling out a booklet.

**Author's Note:**

> \\\ unfinished


End file.
